LG is making ‘bendable and unbreakable’ OLED display, for useless curved smartphone

Share This article

LG has confirmed that it has begun mass production of a flexible, 6-inch OLED display for smartphones. According to LG, these displays are both bendable and unbreakable (if LG would like to send us a prototype so that we can test the latter claim, that’d be lovely). LG’s flexible OLED display will apparently hit the market inside the “G Flex,” a 6-inch curved-screen smartphone that’s expected to be announced in November. Unfortunately, curved smartphones are virtually useless — and actually worse ergonomically than normal, flat smartphones.

Back in June at SID 2013, LG showed off a 6-inch OLED display that could be easily bent with a light touch of the finger (pictured above). A few days ago, a rumor emerged that LG was working on a 6-inch “G Flex” smartphone that would be announced in November. And now, trying to ride the news cycle wave, LG has confirmed that it has indeed begun mass production of the new display. It hasn’t confirmed the existence of the G Flex, but if the display is being mass-produced, it makes sense that there’s a device coming. Fellow chaebol and LG’s biggest competitor, Samsung, has also confirmed that it will be releasing a curved-display smartphone in October. (See: LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays.)

This curved display breakthrough comes as part of a move towards building OLEDs on plastic substrates. Historically, OLEDs use a glass substrate, which is both rigid and heavy. Building OLEDs on plastics, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), results in displays that are both lighter and reasonably flexible. At this point we’re not generally talking about OLED displays that can bend through 90 degrees, like a piece of paper, but rather a few degrees for every few inches of display. In the image at the top of the story, you are probably seeing the maximum bending radius of LG’s display. While we can’t speak specifically for Samsung’s flexible OLED display, it probably has very similar specs to LG’s.

LG began mass-producing flexible e-ink displays, also on a plastic substrate, last year

In practice, neither the LG or Samsung flexible displays will actually be used in a flexible device. While LG claims that its display is unbreakable, that’s obviously a lie, and bending it by more than its large bending radius of 700mm would result in a whole lot of dead pixels. If either LG or Samsung produced an actual flexible smartphone, it would likely break the first time that you sat down with it in your pocket. Instead, these flexible displays will be used to make smartphones that have curved, rigid displays — much like the Nexus S, but slightly more concave.

The theory, as far as we can tell, is that a concave smartphone is a lot more comfortable to hold against the side of your face when making calls. Beyond that, though, a curved display doesn’t improve smartphone usability. If anything, it actually detracts from the smartphone experience. Can you imagine watching a TV show on your smartphone, where the edges are curved around slightly? Or playing a game, where the on-screen controls are on the curved left and right edges? How will a curved smartphone look and feel in your pants pocket? With the curved display laying flush against your face, will it get really greasy?

Curved smartphones are a nice idea, but in practice they leave a lot to be desired. Still, they’re an exciting stepping stone towards fully flexible devices, which will actually be really cool.

Tagged In

Post a Comment

I thought that the idea behind phones with flexible screens was to build smaller phones with foldable rolled screens that can be depleted when needed.

Piotrek

Hopefully those screens will be way less likely to be destroyed when phone is dropped

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Yeah, I was wondering if curved phones will be tougher or not. I guess the balance will be different, so they’ll be more likely to hit a corner? But no clue how that’ll actually affect screen survival.

Imagine sitting down on a curved phone too — a flat phone can’t flex, but a curved phone could flex and snap…

Piotrek

I was thinking about those used in regular, “straight”, phones. Many times glass shatters and screen is not working even if enclosure is hardly damaged. Plastic should be more resistant.

Joel Detrow

That’s exactly the point of these; I can’t imagine why anyone would want a curved smartphone. A curved TV, or computer monitor, or dashboard display, maybe, but not a phone.

St0mp

Its good tech just going in the wrong direction.

Techutante

I’ll take a 4-5 foot wide slightly curved computer screen please!

Angel Ham

Give it to a 3yo child (or a 16yo teenager) and we’ll see how unbreakable it can be.

thehypothetical

unless it can roll up like sony’s prototypes from like, 5 years ago, the “curved” thing is uber gimmicky.

Naipier

Pretty innovative

Naipier

The idea of a flexible screen-phone might not be the best application of this sort of technology, but it’ll provide some proof-of-concept for future use.

Techutante

It just needs more fine tuning and it’ll be a piece of paper you can roll up and stuff in your jacket pocket.

Naipier

That would be truly awsome! As a piano player and composer, I could totally imagine unfurling a piece of of this material and accessing music composition software and record playing a piano all on it’s surface!

Lim Lian Hing

i see more use for this as a watch.

MadisonHJ

Useless? The Brazillian girls want this! They want a phone that can follow the curvature of their curvaceous butts!

Seth

These will be everywhere.

Marble Shark

The author of this article clearly has a lot ot learn about the benefits of curved smartphone displays…

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2015 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.